BATFN has been on hiatus the past few months, but we’re getting ready for some meetings in coming months. In the meantime, we’ll highlight a few events that may be of interest to members. Solutions Journalism Network San Francisco Hub Launch Party Hosted by the Solutions Journalism Network The Solutions Journalism Network is relaunching its website, and with it, unveiling the Solutions Hub, an online space to connect, support, and celebrate reporters, editors, academics, students, communications professionals, social entrepreneurs, and practitioners in various fields around the world—all those interested in informing and shaping the world we live in. We’ll also be releasing the Solutions Story Tracker, our growing collection of over 1,000 solutions stories, searchable by author, publication, location, and keyword. Join us to celebrate! Come hear about the...

BATFN has been on hiatus the past few months, but we’re getting ready for some meetings in coming months. In the meantime, we’ll highlight a few events that may be of interest to members. Forests lost and found: deforestation control and forest resurgence in Latin America – Susanna B. Hecht Hosted by the Carnegie Institution for Science – Department of Global Ecology Latin American forests express complex trends and none are more startling than the decline of deforestation in Amazonia by some 80%, and forest recovery in many regions which, like El Salvador, were described as places where nature “had been extinguished.” This lecture explores the politics, political ecologies and policies to limit deforestation, and the complex dynamics of the forest transition ranging from remittances, urbanization and social movements and the complex ways in which...

Driven by Silicon Valley, innovation and technology have disrupted the way we experience everyday life. But what about using innovative technology around drones, data, & mobile to solve meaningful, critical problems? Hosted at the BNY Mellon Innovation Center in Palo Alto, the event will discuss how technology is being used to empower meaningful solutions.

Join us on November 12 at 6:30 pm for a Bay Area Tropical Forest Network (BATFN) event on conservation, health, and human rights, held at UC Berkeley’s 103 Mulford Hall. The event will feature an interactive presentation by Shannon Randolph, an environmental anthropologist and conservation specialist with Stanford d.school training in human-centered design. She will share how she trains teams in rapid ethnography in order to understand local reasoning and cultural meaning of environmental resources relevant to conservation and zoonotic disease risk. The presentation will be followed by a panel discussion with specialists who are at the interface between conservation, health, and/or human rights in tropical forests. Panelists will include Shannon Randolph, Christopher Herndon, M.D. (President and Co-Founder, Acaté Amazon Conservation), and Adam Zuckerman (Environmental and Human...

Join us on Thursday, October 8 from 6-8 pm for a Bay Area Tropical Forest Network (BATFN) event held at the Carnegie Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University. Global Forest Watch, a project led by the World Resources Institute, is a dynamic online platform that empowers people around the world with the information they need to better manage and conserve forest landscapes. GFW unites the latest satellite technology, open data, and crowdsourcing in an online forest monitoring and alert system. The platform allows users to obtain information about the status of forests worldwide, analyze forest trends, and create custom maps of forest landscapes. Please join the World Resource Institute’s Sarah Lake and Karla Renschler as they discuss and demonstrate the GFW platform, as well as the associated Commodities and Fires “apps,” which empower users to analyze the impacts of key...

Join us this September to discuss the current capacity needs for detecting and preventing illegal logging and the present and future of ‘perimeter defense’ technologies. This meeting will facilitate dialogue between users and technology providers to scale up effective application of new innovations in the field.

About BATFN

BATFN is an informal social network in the Bay Area broadly interested in tropical forest conservation and ecology. We gather monthly, typically for a happy hour beverage in the Peninsula area. The event is free and we provide snacks and drinks. Think Green Drinks but with a focus on forests.

Our goal is to foster peer-to-peer networking in a relaxed atmosphere where ideas, data, and collaboration flow freely. This is a great opportunity to connect with media, scientists, economists, foundations, activists, artists and many others thinking about these issues. Everyone is welcome! It is a great way to get in touch with other people working on similar interests or to learn more about current issues and initiatives in forest conservation.